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EAST ASIA.
themselves with the gold coins and other precious objects buried in the ruins.
Johnson, who refers to this tradition, visited one ruined city close to Khotan,
where " brick tea," Greek and Byzantine coins, besides gold ornaments like those
still worn by the Hindu women, are frequently picked up. The ruins of another
city near Kiria yielded images of Buddha and a clay statuette of the ape
Hanuman. Thanks to its almost rainless climate and dry air, the ruins of Chinese
Turkestan last for long ages, and walls of adobe are still seen just
as they stood
when dismantled some eight hundred years ago. The sands also help to preserve
the buildings, and when a shifting dune reveals some old edifice, it is generally
found in the same state as when originally engulfed.
FLORA AND FAUNA.
In such a climate vegetation is naturally represented by but few species. The
plains nowhere display grassy tracts or flowery steppes. Eeeds and tall aquatic
plants, a few shrubs, such as the jida (Ela-.agnits), a sort of wild olive, some
tamarinds and poplars at most 30 or 40 feet high, form the chief elements in the
spontaneous growth of the Tarim basin. The poplar,
which is the salient feature
along the watercourses, is of the Pop/i/us dirersifolia species, presenting,
as indicated
by its botanical name, a great variety in the form and size of its leaves. The very
sap of these plants is saline, and in their shade the ground is quite bare, covered
either with grey sand or a white efflorescence.
Thanks to their irrigation works, the natives have developed a cultivated flora
relatively far richer than the wild growths. The hamlets are shaded with clusters
of walnuts, and all the gardens in the Khotan and Yarkand districts have their
mulberry plots. The pear, apple, peach, apricot, olive, and trailing vine intertwine
their branches in the orchards, and all yield excellent fruits, while abundant
crops of maize, millet, barley, wheat, rice, cotton, hemp, and melons are raised
round about the villages, which are often buried in a dense vegetation of almost
tropical luxuriance.
On the banks of the Tarim and its affluents the species of wild fauna are even
less numerous than those of the wild flora. Besides the wild boar and hare quadru-
peds are rare, although the tiger, panther, lynx, wolf, fox, and otter are met in
the thickets along the river banks, while the maral deer and antelope keep to the
open plains. None of the mammals and two species only of birds are peculiar to
this region. Prjevalsky enumerates forty-eight species of avifauna altogether, but
in spring and autumn Lake Lob is visited by millions of birds of passage, which
here find u convenient resting-place on their weary flights between Southern Asia
and Siberia. They arrive in a thoroughly exhausted state, and it is noteworthy
that they come, not from the south, but from the south-west, thus avoiding the
bleak plateaux of Tibet.
It was in the neighbourhood of Lake Lob that Prjevalsky saw a wild camel,
an animal whose existence had been doubted by most naturalists, although con-
stantly mentioned in the Chinese records and spoken of by the natives of Turkestan